Secrets (13 page)

‘Hullo?’ said Tess.

‘Hullo, dear.’

‘Can I help you?’

The lady laughed. ‘I was about to ask you the same thing. I live here, dear – what were you doing in my kitchen?’

In the short time it took for Tess to wonder how on earth to respond to this, she watched the lady become visibly puzzled. Her thin lips worked over her teeth as if she was in deep conversation with herself. Suddenly, she'd aged. She touched her hand to her hair, pressing firmly through to her head as if to check it was still there. Doing so left an indentation in her hairstyle.

‘I just popped out to the shops. To get something. Didn't I?’ She looked at Tess. ‘Can you remember what?’ Wolf was trying to put his nose right into her pocket. ‘Stop it, Wolf,’ she said.

She knew the dog's name. And then Tess knew why. She walked over to her and held out her hand – not for the lady to shake, but for her to take as support.

‘I'm Tess,’ she said kindly.

‘I'm Mrs Saunders,’ the lady said, holding onto Tess as a child holds onto their mother. ‘But you can call me Mary.’

Tess felt tears prick but had no idea why they were there. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.

‘Lovely, dear,’ Mary said. ‘I think I probably baked a cake yesterday too. If Wolf hasn't scoffed it.’

They sat at the kitchen table, the contemplative, measured tock from the grandfather clock in the hallway adding a soothing structure.

‘Sugar?’

‘Two, please. Though I used to be sweet enough.’

Mary enjoyed the way Tess laughed at this.

‘Biscuit?’

‘Well!’ She took one daintily, as if she was taking tea at the palace.

‘Joe isn't here,’ Tess said.

‘I should hope not! Unless he's playing hooky from school. He'll be home soon enough.’

‘Soon enough.’ And Tess thought, won't you come home, Joe – won't you come home and see who's here?

Every now and then Mary looked at Tess with momentary confusion but didn't seem to mind being unable to quite place her. It was as if Tess's benign presence rendered insignificant the finer details of who she was and why she was here. Crumbs spittled from Mary's mouth and she dabbed them away. Tess noted her hands were elegant but the nails were uneven and the skin was not only blemished with age; it was also dry and thin from lack of attention. She spread her own fingers out across the edge of the table, like a pianist about to play. Mary took note.

‘Not married yet?’

Tess shrugged and shook her head.

‘Joe'll be down on bended knee – when he's back from university. Though what sort of life he can offer you, I don't know. Now – if he'd followed the family path to the doctor's door, well, that would be a different situation altogether.’

‘I don't mind that he's not a doctor,’ Tess found herself replying before pulling herself up sharp and wondering if facilitating a confused lady's imaginings was tantamount to fraud – or cruelty.

‘What's that?’ Mary looked through to the hallway at much the same time that Wolf took himself off to sit at the bottom of the stairs with his ear cocked.

‘It's the baby,’ Tess said.

‘The
baby
?’

Tess thought about it. ‘Little baby Emmeline,’ she said. ‘She'll be waking from her nap.’

‘Little baby Emmeline,’ Mary murmured, as if convincing herself that she'd only momentarily forgotten about little baby Emmeline.

If Em hadn't quite woken from her nap then the sharp rapping at the door-knocker and the clangorous din of the doorbell certainly ensured she had.

‘Someone at the door,’ Mary said. ‘Whoever can it be at this time of day?’

‘I'll go and see,’ Tess said, patting Mary's hand. ‘You relax.’ She called upstairs to Em to hang on, Mummy's coming. Then she climbed over Wolf and opened the door.

A plump young woman stood there, in a uniform that was so generic Tess wasn't sure which profession it served – dinner lady or paramedic, cleaner or nurse.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ she said and her accent was local and strong. ‘Is Joe Saunders around?’

‘No,’ Tess said, ‘sorry, he's in London for the time being.’

‘And you are?’

‘Tess. Housekeeper.’

‘Laura Gibbings.’ She was frowning at Tess. ‘From Swallows.’ Tess looked none the wiser. ‘Swallow House Residential Care Home. We've lost—’

‘Mary?’

Laura looked both shocked and relieved. ‘She's
here
? Already?’ ‘Having a cuppa and a biccie,’ Tess said in what she hoped would be a collusionary sort of way. She didn't want Mary taken from her, from here, just yet.

Laura nodded. ‘I thought I'd pop up here myself – before they send out the search party.’

Tess nodded.

‘The others – they can be a bit – you know – impatient.’

Tess nodded again.

‘She can't half move, that one, when she wants to,’ Laura laughed.

Though Tess continued to nod she thought of Mary's thick ankles and the level of dogged conviction the steep drag up to the house must have required. ‘Laura, why don't you come in for a cuppa too – then I could drop you both back off. Use the phone if you like – tell them the runaway hasn't, well, run away.’

Laura was smiling her gratitude when suddenly she froze. ‘What's that?’

‘That's my baby.’

‘A
baby
? Here? At
Joe's
? Whatever does he think?’

Tess thought about it. ‘Actually, I don't think he has a problem with it.’

‘Well, I suppose he's not here that much.’

‘Exactly,’ said Tess.

So Tess went upstairs to see to Em, and Laura went into the kitchen to see to Mary. They drank more tea and Em and Mary made a similar mess with the biscuits. The baby seemed entranced by all this female energy, whatever the age. Wolf made himself scarce.

‘We'd better go,’ Laura said a little reluctantly. ‘It'll not long be high tea.’

How different the view from the car than from on foot. How odd it felt to be back behind the wheel for the first time since her arrival. How strange to be travelling at a faster pace than a walk. It almost seemed steeper than on foot. Laura directed Tess down to the front then up along Marine Parade and into the Swallow House driveway some yards later.

Tess looked at the grand building.

‘Worse places to work, I can tell you,’ Laura said. ‘I was three years at one in Redcar. Dear God, the smell of piss.’

Tess looked at her sharply and glanced in the rear-view mirror but Mary was as engrossed in Em as Em was in her, and they were busy examining each other's buttons.

‘I mean, it was a shitehole compared with Swallows. Just couldn't get the place clean, I couldn't. The smell – seemed to have got into the bricks, you know? It closed down. Too right too. So here I am. Coming up three years.’

‘But how old are you?’ Tess said, thinking she looked way too young to have six years of elderly care to her credit.

‘Twenty-one next month.’

‘That's amazing,’ said Tess. ‘I salute you.’

Laura thought it was odd, a little over the top, but she could see Tess meant it.

‘How old are you, then?’

‘Thirty,’ Tess said.

‘Thirty,’ Laura marvelled as if it was a distant goal. ‘You're not from round here, though?’

‘Down south,’ said Tess, wanting to leave it at that.

‘London?’ Laura said expectantly.

‘For a while,’ Tess said as she parked and turned off the engine. Everyone seemed content to remain in the sudden stillness. ‘Nice to meet you, Laura Gibbings.’

‘And you.’

‘Listen – if Mary, you know, goes missing again, I'll let you know, shall I, if she comes home? And you'll phone me, will you, to let me know if she might be on her way?’

‘Early-onset dementia,’ Laura said quietly. Then she brightened, turned round and clucked at Mary sweetly. ‘She gets confused. Don't you, love?’

‘But she always heads home?’

‘That's my instinct,’ said Laura, ‘and hers too, apparently. I know her best, see. She's a bit of a bag with the others – but we rub along just fine. Don't we, love! The others worry she'll go off the pier or peg off down the beach. It's all about Health and Safety and not getting sued, nowadays. Anyway, she doesn't much like the beach, our Mary.’

‘Nor do I,’ Tess said darkly before visibly brightening. ‘But shall we do that – you and me – keep in touch?’

‘Sounds like a plan, Stan,’ Laura said which made Tess laugh. Followed by Em.

‘Stan?’ said Mary.

And Laura said, bugger me – Stan was only her old boy, wasn't he.

‘You're all right, Mary,’ she said, twisting around again and offering Mary her hand. ‘You're all right. We're home now, love.’

Tess helped everyone out and up the front stairs, thinking Laura was an old head on young, capable shoulders.

‘Do you want to come in?’ Laura asked.

‘Another time,’ Tess said though she was loitering.

‘Any time,’ said Laura, ‘inside visiting hours, of course. Come on, Mrs Saunders, let's get you in.’

‘Bye bye, Mary,’ Tess said and Mary turned and stared at her vacantly.

‘Goodbye, dear.’

And as Laura led her into the house, Tess heard Mary say, do I know her? and she heard Laura say, ‘Course you do, Mary – that's Joe's girl, that is.’

She drove off and kept driving, right out of town out along the Loftus road. All the way past the Boulby potash mine, which looked like a
Dr Who
backdrop, before driving inland, into the countryside. She parked the car and took Em from her seat, perching the child on a five-bar gate looking out across fields.

‘It is nice here, isn't it, Em. I think we'll stay. I really do.’

It wasn't until Tess had driven home, fed the dog, fed and bathed Em and sat down by herself with a bowl of soup that she allowed herself a little surge to be thought of as Joe's girl.

Chapter Twelve

Joe did ring. The day after his departure, the evening of the day when Tess met Mary. Tess heard the phone and hovered, wanting it to be Joe but not wanting to take it for granted. When the answering machine clicked in and she heard his voice, for all the button-pushing configurations she tried, she could not interrupt it. She considered dialling 1471 in case he was phoning from a hotel or apartment, or she could call him back on his mobile – he'd left the number on the kitchen calendar. But she did neither because all his message actually said was that he was phoning, ‘like I said I would’. In the silence of the house after the answering machine clicked off, his message continued to reverberate in her mind. No ‘how are you’. No ‘hope all's well’. Joe's girl, indeed! Still, she found it impossible not to dither the evening away with whether to pick up the phone or not. She justified that she was too tired to speak anyway, what with all the cleaning and hills and Mary business.

While the TV flickered away in her peripheral vision, Mary accosted her mind's eyes. Tess realized she'd simply assumed Joe's parents were long dead because he spoke of both with an air of neutral finality. The more she thought about it, the more unnerving she found it that his mother lived in the same small town. Why hadn't he mentioned her before, let alone warned Tess of the probability that she'd come knocking? Ah, but was it any of her business – did it have anything to do with house-sitting? Well, yes, actually, it did – if someone was going to give her an almighty shock by lurking around the property and peering in through the windows, whatever their age or frailty. Didn't Joe usually warn his house-sitters about this? Or was it a more recent thing? Early-onset dementia. Mary was probably only in her mid-seventies. Was it still Mary's house – was Joe just house-sitting too?

Tess would be mentioning it to him when he next rang or returned. Your mum popped round for a cup of tea and a digestive. Nice place, that Swallows Residential Care Home, great view.

It was the view which Tess used as an excuse to push Em's buggy into the drive at Swallows at the end of the week. There'd been no further contact from Joe. No contact from anyone, actually, apart from the friendly but limited hellos, good mornings, and good afternoons of passers-by and the Everything Shop lady.

‘Would you look at that view,’ Tess marvelled to Em as they stood at the top of the driveway looking out over the downy clifftop and straight out to sea.

‘Can I help you? Visiting isn't for another ten minutes.’

‘Oh – I – we.’

The woman was in the same uniform that Laura had worn. Hers, it appeared, came without the smile. ‘That'll be quiet, will it? Some of them in there can get a little –
excitable
– if there's noise. Not that they're a quiet bunch themselves at the best of times.’

Tess looked at the woman and wondered where Laura was. She didn't like her daughter referred to as ‘that’ or ‘it’. Nor did she like the woman's implied exasperation when referring to the residents.

‘
That
is Emmeline,’ Tess said, ‘and Mrs Saunders is
our
friend.’

The woman folded her arms. ‘You're welcome to wait. But visiting's not for another ten minutes.’

‘Seven,’ Tess said as she pushed the buggy away.

The view was so lovely, the weather was good – but why were the benches in the garden empty? Why were the residents cooped up inside on a day like today? Was it staffing issues or strict scheduling? Then she asked herself what she was doing here anyway, taking it upon herself to visit this secret mother of Joe's. But she answered that it was a nice thing to do – for everyone concerned. And what else was she going to do with her day? She was tired of the scrubbing and the spiders and the hoicking; her body was stiff from stretching and ached from bending. And this was a change from walking to the pier, having only the fishermen and their empty nets to exchange nods with and sometimes a smile or a wave with Seb.

Returning to the front door a defiant seven minutes later, Tess was greeted by Laura.

‘I thought it sounded like you,’ she welcomed her warmly. ‘Don't mind Di – she's a crabby old slink. But she does have a heart. Somewhere.’

‘How's Mary?’

‘In one place today,’ Laura said, helping Tess up the steps with the buggy. ‘A little quiet, I'd say. How's this little 'un?’

Tess liked the way Laura squatted down regardless of the way it made her uniform stretch and strain.

‘How are you, Em?’

Em brandished her beaker in reply.

The place didn't smell of wee. It smelt more like a library, less like a hospital though it shared the linoleum floors and particular signage of the latter, and really only the hushed ambience of the former.

‘She's in the day room,’ Laura said over her shoulder as she led the way. She stopped at a door and peered through the safety glass. ‘As I said, you might find her a bit, well,
distracted
. Well, she was this morning.’ Laura looked at Tess. ‘But you can never tell, really, how long it's going to last. It goes as quickly as it comes – one minute they're away with the fairies, the next they're back in the land of the living. Sad when you think they'd rather not be.’

Tess looked into the room through the glass in the door and felt suddenly a little apprehensive. Was all this fair on Em? Or Mary? And even Joe too?

Laura sensed her reticence. ‘Come on, love, she'll be delighted with the company – whether or not she knows you from Adam today.’

The door opened into a world Tess knew existed but had never been party to. Her grandmother had died in hospital a day after being admitted from her own home. Here, though, were the infirm elderly en masse; all of them displaced because, for whatever reason, home was no longer an option. Yet there was a sense of calm about the place, perhaps because of the lack of movement: everyone was simply sitting, sitting as if waiting. Waiting for what? Three o'clock? But it was now five past. Visitors? There seemed to be only Tess and one other. The next meal? That wouldn't be for a while. Some looked as though they were barely breathing, jaws slack, eyes glassy and unfocused. As if they were simply waiting to – Tess didn't want to finish the thought so she smiled at everyone hoping to mask her pervasive feelings of sadness and, she had to admit, discomfort.

The light from the sun, from the expanse of North Sea and the huge sky, flooded the room spinning silver into grey hair and an opalescence to otherwise thin old skin. Even the minute lady whose wig had slipped had an air of composure about her – sitting serene, the light playing off the folds and creases of her baggy stockings like a Da Vinci drawing. Sitting beside her, a resident whose sandals revealed toes so overlapped Tess thought it made her look as if she'd been telling lies all her life. The lips of the lady with a startling blue rinse moved constantly, though whether she was talking to herself or just had an involuntary twitch Tess couldn't tell. But her eyes were fixed very darkly on the clock and Tess hoped it was for someone only five minutes late. Em toddled right ahead, looking intently at everyone as she went. Pair after pair of eyes that had been gazing listlessly at nothing in particular now had a welcome focus. One or two of the residents made a noise similar to beckoning a cat. A couple said a cheery hello. One gentleman, with no teeth, still broke into an expansive smile.

Someone said, little Daphne?

Mary, sitting in the corner, looking out to sea, said, Emmeline!

Em went to her outstretched hands. Tess following, nodding and saying hullo to all whom she passed. Mary was delighted, the crows’ feet around her eyes were like rays of sunshine suddenly radiating out from the interminable cloud of old age.

‘Little Emmeline! Where's Wolf?’

The child barked, to a round of applause. She and Mary knitted fingers for a while and communicated with nods and coos. As Tess sat beside them, it slowly dawned on her that she hadn't been noticed by Mary. And then it took for her to say, hullo, Mary! – Mary? Mrs Saunders? – to realize that actually Mary didn't recognize her at all. So Tess became a silent observer, proud to witness the pleasure Em was bringing to the room. Wherever Em went and whatever she picked up (and Tess noticed many similarities between an old-age-friendly room and a baby-friendly one) she received a chorus of approval. This community spoke in a language Em readily understood. They said, ‘apple’ when she picked one up. And when she pointed, they confirmed ‘book’ and ‘shoe’ and ‘blanky’ and ‘tick-tock’. And they nodded knowingly when she talked in gurgles and they clapped when she showed them something or pointed something out. But Mary just gave Tess a distracted, yes, dear when she tried to talk to her.

‘I could bring Wolf one day?’ she suggested to Laura. ‘I've heard of people doing that – taking dogs to care homes, hospices, prisons even. Petting lowers the blood pressure, it's been proven.’

‘It'll raise the blood pressure of Health and Safety,’ Laura declared. ‘A nice idea, love. Just you come back with Em. She's a little actress that one, isn't she. They've liked it – more successful than the flaming bingo I tried to organize last week.’

Tess looked at the lady with the blue rinse, with the ever-moving lips and the eyes fixed on the clock. She was the only resident on whom Em had had little impact. ‘That lady,’ she whispered to Laura. And then she didn't know what it was she wanted to know, it was none of her business after all.

‘Can't stop her doing it and believe me I've tried,’ Laura said anyway. ‘Whatever room she's in, if there's a clock, that's her – gone.’

‘Is she waiting for a visitor?’

‘Possibly,’ said Laura, ‘though she hasn't had one in all the time I've been here.’

An exhausted Em was asleep by the time her mother had strapped her into the buggy. Tess felt low. She'd suddenly felt desperate to leave Swallows, couldn't get out of there quick enough; she'd felt claustrophobic, unwell, but now in the fresh air she felt wretched. For the first time in weeks, she longed for someone to talk to. She wanted to say, Christ, let's go and have a coffee and a cake. She wanted someone with whom she could share the unexpected emotion of the visit. Will we too grow so old? Will you choose your hair to be blue? Will my toes knit like that? Will our chins get whiskery? Will we not mind if our teeth are in or out? Might that be us – waiting and waiting for no one to visit us? Will we sit and wait to die?

She pushed the buggy along the clifftop and stood awhile looking down the path leading to the cliff lift. There was no one around.

‘I'm lonely,’ she said quietly. ‘I'm really really lonely.’ She was immediately ashamed of the emotion.

She took Em home, cursing herself for destroying her SIM card, cursing SIM cards for damaging her memory for numbers in the way that a computer spell-check had compromised her ability to spell. She didn't even know Tamsin's number by rote. Then she wondered about her mobile handset itself. Did it have a memory of its own? She switched it on. And found that it did.

Tamsin didn't recognize Joe's landline number so she didn't take the call. Tess, though, rang again and again until she answered curtly out of frustration.

‘Tamz?’

‘Tess? Jesus freaking Christ, where the fuck are you?’

‘Hullo.’

‘You can't send me a text out of the blue saying you're fine and going away for a bit without telling me the whys and wheres, and then go completely off the radar for – what is it now – a
month
!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Where
are
you? I even went round to your flat and tried to break in. I thought – I don't want to tell you what I thought but it was grisly. Don't laugh. It wasn't bloody funny at the time.’

‘Tamsin – sorry. I didn't think.’

‘Where. The fuck. Are you?’

‘Saltburn.’

There was a pause. ‘Where. The fuck. Is Saltburn?’

‘In Yorkshire.’